“The doctor called it gastric fever, but no one was to hear of it lest there should be an alarm; and it was too late to change the place of the bazaar, though it is so sad to have all that gaiety close at hand.”
If these were the impressions of Anne and Joanna early in the day, what were they later, when, in those not sustained by excitement, spirit and energy began to flag? Cecil’s counter, with her excellent and expensive wares, and her own dignified propriety, was far less popular than those where the goods were cheaper and the saleswomen less inaccessible, and she was not only disappointed at her failure, but vexed when told that the articles must be raffled for. She could not object, but it seemed an unworthy end for what had cost her so much money and pains to procure, and it was not pleasant to see Mrs. Duncombe and Miss Moy hawking the tickets about, like regular touters, nor the most beautiful things drawn by the most vulgar and tasteless people.
Miss Moy had around her a court of ‘horsey’ men who were lounging away the day before the races, and who had excited her spirits to a pitch of boisterousness such as dismayed Mrs. Duncombe herself when her attempts at repression were only laughed at.
Somehow, among these adherents, there arose a proposal for the election of a queen of beauty, each gentleman paying half-a-crown for the right of voting. Miss Moy bridled and tried to blush. She was a tall, highly-coloured, flashing-eyed brunette, to whom a triumph would be immense over the refined, statuesque, severe Miss Vivian, and an apple-blossom innocent-looking girl who was also present, and though Lady Tyrrell was incontestably the handsomest person in the room, her age and standing had probably prevented her occurring to the propounders of the scheme.
The design was taking shape when young Strangeways, who was willing to exchange chaff with Gussie Moy, but was gentleman enough to feel the indecorum of the whole thing, moved across to his sister, and muttered, “I say, Con, they are getting up that stupid trick of election of a queen of beauty. Does Lady Tyrrell know it?”
“Wouldn’t it be rather fun?”
“Horrid bad form, downright impudence. Mother would squash it at once. Go and warn one of them,” signing with his head.
Constance made her way to Eleonora, who had already been perplexed and angered by more than one critical stare, as one and another man loitered past and gazed intrepidly at her. She hurried at once to her sister, who was sitting passively behind her counter as if wearied out, and who would not be stirred to interference. “Never mind, Lenore, it can’t be helped. It is all for the cause, and to stop it would be worse taste, fitting on the cap as an acknowledged beauty, and to that I’m not equal.”
“It is an insult.”
“Never fear, they’ll never choose you while you look so forbidding, though perhaps it is rather becoming. They have not the taste.”